


As I Lay Dying

by Kittleskittle



Series: Niloy Oneshots [1]
Category: Horizon: Zero Dawn (Video Game)
Genre: Catharsis, Death, F/M, Hope, Life - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-10
Updated: 2020-12-10
Packaged: 2021-03-10 04:47:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,462
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27998490
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kittleskittle/pseuds/Kittleskittle
Summary: There's a duel, and then there's the end of the world.
Relationships: Aloy/Nil (Horizon: Zero Dawn)
Series: Niloy Oneshots [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2050677
Comments: 10
Kudos: 17





	As I Lay Dying

A single arrow. That's all it takes for Nil's world to come undone.

He doesn't realize it in the moment, though. Instead, with all the triumph of a victory and all the fulfilled lust of having his desires sated, the former soldier rushes to the side of his defeated opponent. Blood rings in his ears and his heart pummels at his ribcage. Kneeling, he props her up into his lap, grazing bloody fingertips over the youthful swell of her cheek.

"Here, look at me," he says lowly, breathlessly. She complies, confusion and her oncoming death dulling green eyes which had once been determined and full of life. It's the most beautiful thing he's ever seen in his life. He burns the vision into his memory greedily. " _That's it_."

It's only a few heartbeats later that the Nora girl slips away, those once vibrant eyes glassy with the unseeing sheen of death.

But something curious happens to Nil. Rather than the drunken, giddy feeling he normally experiences after taking down an evenly matched opponent, there's only...emptiness. Like a yawning, black void as dark as Shadow has opened in his stomach. It threatens to swallow him whole.

And for the first time in years and years and years, his surety in his code of honor cracks.

"No. No, this is wrong."

Frantically, Nil searches her paling face. Desperately, he recalls the moments with her that led to this one, the life fading from her eyes over and over again. The hole in him grows and grows and grows and he shakes and shakes and shakes, like the final leaf on a great oak at the end of autumn.

Like that leaf, he then snaps away from his tether, drifting down and down and down and away.

An anguished howl rips its way free from his throat, and he cradles the girl close, holds her to his chest, tries to find any remnant of a pulse even though he knows that she's gone. Her skin has already begun to cool, the blood has entirely drained from her face. Again, he finds her eyes.

Burning him, accusing him, asking him _why_ , even from beyond the grave.

"I don't know," Nil chokes out. " _I don't know_."

He realizes then that he hasn't even learned her name, and the one she knew him by was false. Trembling violently, he bends over her, bringing his lips to the shell of her ear.

"Sahad. My name is Sahad. I wish you could have told me yours. I would have liked to know."

The Nora girl's hair is still as red as blood, standing out even more against the white plane of her face, and he tucks it behind her ear.

"You were always too good," he whispers. "Someone like me, though? I've always destroyed everything I've touched. Of course that would mean you, too."

"I'm not surprised."

Nil's breath cuts off, and he whips his head up with so much force the muscles there scream in protest. 

It is her voice, and yet her face is as dead and frozen as it had been moments earlier.

"I suppose it's fitting that I'm finally losing my mind," he laughs bitterly.

"Maybe. Maybe not. You do deserve any pain you're feeling."

Movement out of the corner of his eye has Nil jerking his head around. There, standing a few feet away from him with her arms crossed over her chest, is the girl.

Impossibly, she is also still cradled in his arms. His mouth hanging open, his gaze darts between the two as his brain attempts to make sense of anything that's happened over the last minute. The girl who has spoken is the same in appearance as the one he holds, clad in Carja-style armor exposing a wound on her belly thick with congealed blood. When she takes a few steps towards him, however, Nil finally notices a key difference.

The Nora girl is slightly transparent, as though woven out of translucent silk. Her footfalls make no impression in the grass, as if she isn't solid or even real. What is very real, however, is the fury distorting her fair features.

"You have _no_ idea what's been hanging in the balance," she snarls. "For your sick obsession with killing, for a cheap thrill, you've flirted with the end of the world itself. So, congratulations, _Nil_. Enjoy what will likely be your last days alive with that knowledge."

Carefully, numbly, he lowers her body to the ground, then stumbles to his feet like a newborn baby goat.

"I'm sorry," he says hoarsely. "I didn't want it to end up this way. I thought I did, but..."

"Whatever your intentions were, they don't matter," she seethes. "Nothing matters anymore."

"Please - " Nil reaches out to her, and she recoils. She's close enough that he should have felt the skin of her arm on his fingertips, but they only pass through the limb, as though it's made of air. Unblinkingly, he stares down at his hand. Her blood still coats it.

"However long this takes, you're stuck with me." Eyes like cut emeralds bore into him. "And it _won't_ be fun."

"Isn't there a way to stop it myself?"

"No," is all she says, some of the anger leaving her in a tired exhale.

Nil takes her at her word and nods slowly, unsure of what else to say. He keeps his eyes trained on the ground, fixed to a stalk of wild ember quivering in the breeze.

"My name is Aloy." She tosses it out there casually, as though it's a meaningless detail. To him, it's a precious gift. "You should know it if we're going to apparently be stuck together."

"Aloy." He lifts his chin, just as slowly as he had dropped it. "What do you mean, stuck together?"

"Ever since the moment your little _duel_ ended, I've been trying to leave, but I'm always drawn back. To you." She huffs. "A guilty conscience, I guess."

"You have nothing to feel guilty about," Nil says quietly. "I'm the one who struck you down."

Aloy gives a bitter laugh that sounds like shattered glass. "No, that's ridiculous. I don't have any need for guilt. But here I am, anyway."

As soon as she finishes speaking, blinding pain roars through his stomach. Nil has been in possession of an unusually high pain tolerance since he was a small child, but this has him doubling over and gasping and crying out until his breath comes in strained wheezes. They seem to go on forever - the hot pulses of agony, the nausea that in turn inspires - until he's falling to his knees, not certain whether he will vomit or pass out first. 

But in the blink of an eye, the pain all vanishes at once, almost as though it was never there at all. When he pulls a quavering hand away, however, it's slick with dark red blood.

"I'm...wounded?" Nil says faintly. "When? I didn't realize..."

With a gaze as hard as stone, Aloy looks him up and down. "You'll live. I think."

Curiously, the wound in his abdomen that he has somehow missed before is in the exact same place as her fatal one. That perfect symmetry, along with the irony in the face of her perpetual denial of their similarities, almost gets a laugh out of him.

"We nearly ended each other, in the same way," he murmurs. "Perhaps it would be fitting if I died this way too. Fair's fair."

"No!" Aloy bursts out, so suddenly and with such volume that he can't keep from startling. There's an odd gleam to her eye, a panic that wasn't there before, and it's like she's looking at a place a thousand miles away. "You can't die, Nil! Not now, not when - "

Abruptly, she cuts off and turns away from him, her breathing so labored that he can see her back swelling and deflating with every breath. Automatically, he reaches out to her, once again finding nothing but air. Tightening his lips, he looks away. He has forgotten already.

Mutely, Aloy stalks off. Without anything else to do, Nil follows after her as he always has, glancing down at himself in abject confusion while they walk. The wound in his stomach does not hurt in the slightest, but with the amount of sticky, coagulated blood sluggishly oozing from it, it looks as though it _really_ should. He reasons this oddity away easily enough - some of the blood could be Aloy's, and perhaps she managed to sever an unusual amount of blood vessels, making it appear worse than it actually is. Either way, he should probably clean and bandage it.

 _Is there really any point if the world is to end?_ he thinks humorlessly.

At the edge of the mesa, Aloy comes to a halt. The Spearshafts jut cleanly out from the wild tangle of the Jewel, and a Stormbird circles them in endless, hypnotic circles, the golden hues from the sinking sun reflecting off of its metal carcass. The two - enemies? Rivals? Whatever the relationship between them has morphed into, Nil knows very well they can no longer be considered friends - stare out at it in silence for a long time.

Surprisingly, it's Aloy who ultimately breaks their fragile peace.

"Rations," she mutters. "You should have rations, right?"

"I do," he confirms, unsure of why she's asking, or why she cares. "Enough for the next two weeks.

She sighs. "Well, that should be enough. Won't starve, at least."

"I would have rather you run me through than starve to death," Nil remarks wistfully. "A glorious death in battle, fallen in a spray of blood…now that would have been a magnificent way to go."

Even in profile, he can see how her twilight-painted face pinches and contorts with sorrow. Another long space of melancholy quiet drifts by, pregnant with half-formed thoughts and emotions better left unsaid.

"I should hate you," Aloy says softly. "I have every right to, with how things between us turned out. But I don't. I never have. Why is that?"

Nil shrugs. "I couldn't tell you. At least you're being honest with yourself for once."

"It always bothered me, the way you always insisted that we were somehow the same," she continues, as though she hasn't heard him. "To me, being...or becoming like you was the worst possible fate imaginable. To grow so obsessed with violence that it's the only thing I'm able to find joy in anymore. To use death as the only way to solve my problems."

She tilts her head towards him, the evening's purple shadows settling into the considering lines of her face and making them appear all the harsher. Nil's mouth goes dry.

"I guess I proved you right in the end, huh? I could have walked away. I could have refused to duel you. But I didn't. And now, look at where we are."

"Standing around and waiting for the end of the world," he exhales. "You know, I've spent hours, days waiting for the most opportune moment to loose my arrows, for you to appear at the bandit encampments as you always did. But I never once complained or grew impatient - in fact, I adored every precious second of it. The lull before the action, the kind that makes your teeth clench and chatter with anticipation. That moment when I'd see the bloody gash of your hair on the horizon was the best of it all, with how every part of me trembled with pure desire for what was to come." Nil pauses, his brow knitting. "I have to admit, though, that this kind of waiting, where death is a certainty rather than a possibility, unsettles me."

"Waiting has never been my strong suit. Even as a young girl, I was always impatient to run ahead and get what I wanted. Even now, a couple weeks or so feels like it'll be an eternity." Aloy shakes her head, a tiny smile curving her lips. They're the color of a freshly bitten peach, Nil notices, and he averts his eyes before she catches him staring. "Look at me, rambling on about myself. But I guess if there's any time for it, it's now. It's not like you can actually escape."

"Well, for what it's worth, I'm willing to listen," he drawls, taking that moment to settle down in the grass beside her. His wound does twinge and ache with the movement, but it's distant enough to not be too much of a bother.

Aloy sits as well, her movements as smooth and as graceful as they are in battle. The way the deep hued stalks of grass poke straight through her outstretched legs has Nil's lips quirking, if only for a moment.

"I guess you're my captive audience, then." The suggestion of a smile curves her lips. "Funny how I'm only able to talk about all of this in a circumstance like this one."

"It's not as odd as you might think." Nil shrugs loosely. "I've done similar, in the times between partners and with an abundance of fresh kills. Death makes us all honest."

Bringing her legs to her chest, Aloy wraps her arms around them and rests her chin on her knees with an exhale like a soft breeze. "I think every major event in my life can be traced back to me wanting to belong somewhere, with someone. I had Rost, but as much as he did for me, he was never quite enough. I was an outcast, so there were no playmates or confidants growing up. All I ever knew from the beginning was rejection, from even the youngest Nora."

Her fingers drop as if to pluck a blade of grass, but they slide through the plant uselessly. Whether from her words or from that, Aloy's face crumples for a moment, and Nil wants more than anything to reach out to her again. To touch her somehow, to show her that she's not alone.

But it's too late for that. Maybe it's been too late for longer than he's known.

She goes on, her voice a little strained. "Getting rejected as a child led to training to win the Proving to get answers about my mother, to understand why I was made an outcast upon birth. Somehow, that led the mess I'm in now, where all of a sudden I'm the world's only hope for survival." She takes a shaky breath, gripping her legs tighter. Her knuckles have gone white, and Nil aches to loosen them, to take her hand in his own. "I don't want it. I don't want any of this responsibility. I just wanted to know and maybe...maybe find a place to belong. A place where I wouldn't have to be lonely anymore."

Aloy's kohl-streaked eyelids flutter shut, a twin pair of tears escaping from either eye. They catch the light of the still-setting sun, glimmering like fine crystal. 

His heart cleaves in two, and Nil can't keep himself from speaking anymore.

"At least until the end," he says, "you don't have to be lonely. I know company from the man who stole your life from you isn't what you had in mind, but if this is how it must be, I'll be here."

She angles her head towards him and ensnares him with too-bright eyes. "I think I lost sight of what I truly wanted out of all of this. Finding out about my mother - and I did find out about her - was only the beginning. I guess I forgot what came after that."

Even though her hand is made of nothingness, Nil covers it with his own anyway. The slightest hint of static charge rolls over his fingers as they pass through Aloy's, like he stands before an oncoming storm. She considers him, and it's without malice.

He had made himself nothing, and in so doing, she has become nothing. He has destroyed her, he has stolen away the hopes and dreams borne by the wide-eyed, hopeful child he can almost see within her.

Shame wraps its greasy tendrils around Nil. It drags him under until he can't seem to draw in air, and it's like he's drowning. Beneath the ghost of Aloy's hand, his flexes and digs into dirt and stone and grass, clawing uselessly at that which still lives. The ache from the wound in his stomach blooms until it's throbbing with all the hurt he's inflicted, and not just to her - to the innocents he has maimed and slaughtered, so many nameless faces in so many nameless raids. Fire, blood, sweat, and ash cover his skin in a macabre cloak, a reminder of all the wrong he's done, and there's no place on Earth he can hide from it. He can't speak, he can't even think anymore. This time, he does lean over and vomit, spilling his guts into the dirt.

"Nil? Nil!"

Not even the shock of Aloy's panicked voice can free him from this bottomless spiral of agonized guilt. Nil wants it to end. He wants their places to be swapped, for him to be among the dead instead. Wasn't he already, in a way? Wasn't that why he had asked her for this in the first place?

"It was never supposed to be you," he gasps. "It was always meant to be me."

"It's okay, Nil." He feels something, the lightest pressure on his upper back, as though freshly fallen snow has blanketed it. But instead of cold, it's warm. "Just breathe for me, okay? Just breathe."

He could never refuse her. It takes all of the effort he's ever possessed, but painfully, slowly, he finds air. The first breath is the hardest. Each one after that is a little easier. Eventually, it doesn't hurt anymore. Eventually, everything goes back to normal.

When he's finally able to raise his head, hours have passed, and Aloy is staring intently at him. There's a worried crease in her brow, one he wishes he could smooth away like a wrinkle in a bedsheet.

"There," she says, voice wavering and unsure. "I think... I think we're okay now. Right?"

"I think so." He takes another breath, just to be sure. "Yes."

The potency of the relief and joy in her eyes makes his blood sing more than any kill ever has.

Night falls. It's a dusky veil drifting down upon the Jewel, quieting the daytime chorus of fowl and fauna. Only the machines continue to roam, their blue lights gems beneath a blackened canopy.

Nil sleeps, Aloy does not. She's awake when he is. She talks sometimes, about inconsequential anecdotes and happenings during their time together in the bandit camps, and he listens and answers. The subject of the duel is skirted entirely, for which he is grateful. She encourages him to eat, and he obliges, even though he lacks hunger. 

The sun rises on a new day. The sun sets on an old one. Days begin to blur together, and still, they wait around for the coming end. 

"I grew up around here, you know," Nil says one day. He doesn't know which one it is anymore. "In the Jewel."

Aloy doesn't respond. Instead, she stares at him in that peculiar way of hers, as though he's a puzzle she's determined to solve.

"My family is… _was_ nobility." He sneers. "We had a small estate here. It was all a farce. The useless grandstanding, the selfish boasting - I learned to despise it all early. I was away from home often as a boy, playing in the jungle and pretending I was anywhere else."

"Sahad." Aloy draws the name out like a wire, and Nil has to suppress a shudder. "Your real name. It was Sahad, right? I thought I heard…"

His lips thin. "Yes, yes. Sahad Khane Argir. My full name and title, and one I meant to leave behind. Perhaps not my wisest idea, seeing as how things have ended up. But, I digress."

Again, she's silent. Again, he doesn't mind.

"For me, it was a relief the day my parents were ordered to relinquish me to the Sundom's army," Nil goes on. "The old Sun-King's edict was still in effect - the first son of each family, to be trained from the age of ten in the military. I was a boy who became a man in the theatre of war. First, I was an ordinary soldier, and then, for my talents and bloodlust, I later became a kestrel."

"You've been broken," Aloy whispers. "This wasn't who you were, was it? Nil… it means nothing, and it wasn't your first name."

"It was a matter of survival," Nil counters. "I did what I had to in order to stay alive. And in Jiran's army, that meant excelling at every aspect of battle I could, and then eventually learning to love what I had been sold into. It took two years of prison to finally parse out a way to accept and meter myself." He levels her with a flat look. He rarely finds himself frustrated with her, but this topic is the exception. "Something which you have yet to do."

"When I told you about the Eclipse, up by Maker's End" - here, Aloy hesitates for a moment before pushing on - "I half hoped that you would join me. Ridiculous, right? But the more I think about it, the more I wish things had gone that way."

"Well, we ended up stuck together anyway, so it's not a total loss," Nil replies lightly before sobering. "I'll admit, I was tempted. And I'm also not above admitting that it's what I should have done. I was searching for a way to continue as I was, and you offered it to me on a silver platter. As single-minded as I was, I couldn't see it that way."

She reclines fully into the grass, splayed out at his side. Nil frowns. The grass beneath her is darker, more visible - or maybe he's just imagining things. Icy apprehension spreads and pools in his belly anyway.

"Maybe I could have shown you another path. A better one. I think I wanted to from the beginning, actually. It's why I kept talking to you and filling the role of your partner - which I am still _not_ , by the way. I guess I saw that potential for change from the beginning. Was I wrong, though? Was it all for nothing?"

"No. No, it wasn't," he says roughly. "If I had more time...I would have found a way to try to atone. Just like I did in the Sacred Lands, for all the blood I had spilled upon them during the Red Raids. I learned that I was wrong once, and I would have accepted that lesson again." His throat closes up. "But now, there's not any more time. With what remains, I must live with the full weight of my sins."

"It'll be soon," Aloy says softly, distantly. "I think so, at least. What will I even say to you, when it does happen? Am I ready to say goodbye?"

She lifts a hand to tuck a lock of russet hair behind an ear, a nervous habit he had first noticed long ago, when the dynamic between them had been far simpler. The cold in his guts spreads, begins to creep outward and into his extremities. Nil's vision hadn't been false. The tips of her fingers are near invisible, and the rest of her form is little more than a suggestion of shape and color sprawled out over the ground.

"Aloy," he breathes. "Aloy, you're fading."

Befuddled, she holds out her hands and stares down at them. The look in her eye - now only holding on to the faintest hint of verdant color, Nil realizes with a crushing wave of sorrow - is mildly confused. But even more than that, there's a note of bittersweet acceptance. 

_Why aren't you afraid?_ he wants to ask. _Why aren't you worried? Is this what death does to us? Grants us the purest form of surrender to ourselves?_

Time is sand through a sieve. It drains out in a trail behind Nil as he stalks over the length of the mesa, over and over again. In all the waiting, he's finally grown restless. There are black clouds blotting out the far horizon of the north, and steadily, they grow. They're as alive as the strings of ivy cascading down like banners above him, alive as the curious triangle of purple flowers enclosing an odd metal device he had overlooked upon climbing up here.

"A metal flower," Aloy remarks from behind him as he stares at the object. It's the most interesting thing up on this mesa, and he finds himself drawn to it. Once again, it's nighttime, and the inky clouds lovingly cup the faintly glowing disc of a half moon between their wispy tendrils. The device captures its silvery light in its many petals and reflects it back onto him. Unlike the brazen light of the sun which scorches and burns, this light settles and soothes.

Nil turns to face her. "Oh?"

"When I scan them with this" - she taps at the triangular piece of jewelry on her ear with nonexistent fingertips, a motion he has seen many times - "there's...poetry, I guess. I don't know where they came from or why they're here."

"What does this one say?" he asks, his curiosity piqued. Words - and the ways one could string them together to inspire a myriad of feelings - have always been an interest of his.

Aloy gives that faint, sad smile, the one which Nil has grown accustomed to. He hates it.

"The one I found up here is...interesting. It's longer than most. And it's very sad."

She begins to recite, her voice flowing like water:

"Flow, softly flow, by lawn and lea,  
A rivulet then a river:  
Nowhere by thee my steps shall be  
For ever and for ever.

But here will sigh thine alder tree  
And here thine aspen shiver;  
And here by thee will hum the bee,  
For ever and for ever.

A thousand suns will stream on thee,  
A thousand moons will quiver;  
But not by thee my steps shall be,  
For ever and for ever."

The void in Nil's heart expands just a little more. "It's fitting, at least."

"I realized...I realized - yesterday, I think, you were actually sleeping restfully - I don't want this to be the end between us." He can see her throat bobbing as she struggles to speak. "But do I have a choice?"

Apparently, she hasn't accepted this as much as he had originally believed.

Nil wants to take her into his arms. He wants to hold her, to embrace her, to reassure her that it'll be okay, even when he knows it won't be. But even if it were his place to offer such intimacies, he can't, so instead he says, "I don't want it to be the end either, Aloy."

To his utmost surprise, she reaches out to him as if to cradle his face in her invisible hand. It's an even greater shock when Nil feels not only warmth, but a suggestion of _pressure_. It's weak, but it's there. None of this makes any sense - how is that which is incorporeal able to be felt, where there was nothing when she had been more solid - but he leans into it anyway. He breathes the moment in, savors it as if he's tasting a wine from the stores of the palace in Meridian itself. Because, Sun and Shadow, when was the last time anyone had touched him without the threat of death behind their actions? Here, there's only care. There's simple affection. There's him, there's her, two beings standing alone together in the dark with only weak, waning moonlight to guide them. 

Though faded, Aloy's eyes are as bright as stars. Nil realizes, for the first time, that looking into the eyes of another as their grasp on life is severed isn't the only way to obtain the human connection he has desperately sought since he was a boy.

To the north, the sooty clouds build and spread outward at an ever-increasing clip. They're ugly and gnarled, and the way they roil and thrash as they move reminds him of a herd of machines crashing through a lake. Soon, he'll be swallowed by that writhing morass. Nil wonders how much it will hurt.

He asks Aloy how much longer she thinks it'll be, but she doesn't answer. She talks less now, spends more time staring out over the expanse of the jungle in deep thought. Sometimes, he sits beside her and talks for her. Mostly, he remains in silence. 

Her calves and forearms have entirely vanished, as has all of her once vibrant color. She's nothing more than an imprint of fog, a wisp of smoke. Nil spends a lot of time simply looking at her, taking to heart all of her features. The slight upturn of her nose, the spray of freckles across her cheeks, the untamed mane of her hair, the convex curve of her breasts pressing against fine Carja silk. If she disappears wholly before his demise, he'll at least have a near perfect image of her to recall when he goes.

Despite his lack of care, Nil's wound knits itself together on its own. Most of the pain has dissipated, leaving behind only the occasional dull ache or sharp twinge when he moves too quickly. It's enough that he's able to draw his bow without much of a struggle, and he spends hours firing arrows into hapless trees and boulders. Sometimes, he tightens the resistance of his bowstring as high as it can go and sends the projectiles sailing into the Jewel below just to see how far they travel. Usually, they're swallowed by the trees before he can judge distance.

Time continues to wind down. The clouds continue their inevitable death march. Aloy continues to fade. Life rushes to meet death.

And one day, when Nil wakes up, the sun goes out.

He jolts up, gasping and wide-eyed. It's so dark he can't make out his own hands in front of his face. Wind howls around him and through trees he can no longer see, bending their great branches until they protest with screeching groans. Panic, hot and biting and more powerful than anything he's felt in weeks, chokes him in a stranglehold. 

Aloy. Where is Aloy?

Nil calls her name over the rushing wind and the creaking of the trees. He waits, and he listens. Nothing.

Staggering to his feet, he tries again, screaming that precious gift she had given him over the uproarious tumult. He yells and cries out until his throat is sore and his voice is hoarse. Still, there's nothing but the all-consuming sound of that awful wind. Somewhere far away, thunder snarls wretchedly. There's no preceding lightning, and it feels wrong.

Of course it's wrong, he thinks. it's the end of the world, brought about by his own hand. All of this is wrong.

Just when Nil is about to lose hope, about to lie down and resign himself to the fate he has known, has _always_ known, to be waiting for him - that he'll die alone - he hears it.

Her voice, slicing through the wind and the thunder and the trees like a vengeful blade. She's close, and he can't see her, but knowing she's here, at the end of all things, is enough.

"Nil! Sahad! Can you hear me?"

"Aloy," he sobs, falling to his knees. "Yes, yes, I can."

"I'm here." Aloy's whisper ghosts over his ear. It's a strikingly intimate action, one usually reserved for lovers. "It's okay. It's time."

"I know," Nil gasps. "I know it's time. I'm glad you're here."

"I'm going to stay with you from now on, okay?" Her voice is earnest, and oddly, joyful. "Whether you like it or not, we're sticking together. So there's nothing to be afraid of."

He huffs a disbelieving laugh. "Of course we're sticking together from now on. We'll both be _dead_. No need to try to dress any of this up for me."

"There's nothing to be afraid of," she repeats, and Nil feels a phantom squeeze on his hand. Even though he knows he won't be able to see anything, he drops his gaze, astonished. "Death is terrifying, but I know that sometimes facing down life can be even worse. Maybe that's why you've stayed asleep for so long, even though you've been out of danger for awhile."

All of the sound and the fury - the wind, the thunder, and the trees - ceases at once. The entire world comes to a halt, teetering as if balancing on the head of a pin.

Nil barely dares to breathe.

"What?"

"We have a lot to do, you and I." Aloy's voice quiets, grows deeper and a little husky. "And you've been sleeping long enough. It's time to wake up."

And so he does.

\--

Nil comes to, and there is thunder and wind and the creaking of trees. But there is also rain and light enough to see, and the world feels right again. 

And there, in that scant, stormy light of the tent they're enclosed in, Aloy sits in all her glory, wonderfully solid and bursting with color despite the grey of the morning. She's looking away from him, fiddling with something on her spear, but he can make out every beautiful inch of her. The green of her eyes, the red of her hair, the primary colors of Carja silk caressing her lithe form (and there's not a scratch on her exposed belly, much to his relief), the faint flush dusting over her freckles. She's a goddess come to life, a well of water after a trek through the desert, and everything Nil has ever desired. And when Nil desires something, he doesn't hold back.

"Nil!" Aloy exclaims, dropping the spear at once. She must have felt his eyes on her. "You... you're awake!"

He doesn't hesitate. The wound in his stomach throbs a bit more than it had in his dreams, but he sits up all the same, leans forward, and engulfs her body, so fantastically solid, in his embrace.

"Aloy." He breathes her in, all woodsmoke and earth and something indescribably feminine. "Aloy, I'm so sorry."

"You shouldn't be sitting up!" She wriggles and worms in his arms, but Nil refuses to yield. He holds her closer, just to feel the life bursting within her. "Let me go and lie back down, right now!"

Regretfully, he loosens his hold. Aloy pulls away with pink cheeks, but he swears he can see the trace of a smile on those bitten-peach lips.

"You don't need to apologize," she says as she pushes at his chest, and Nil obediently lies back down. "All-Mother, I was the one who almost killed you."

It's then that he finally recalls the truth of what happened. Memories flash through his brain like the missing lightning - Aloy, accepting the duel. Standing on opposite sides of a grassy stretch of the mesa, staring each other down. A quick scuffle on the ground. Arrows traded back and forth. The hot, deep slash of Aloy's spear across his exposed belly. Blinding pain and darkness. And then, his dreams.

"I was the one who suggested a duel in the first place," he replies after a few minutes have elapsed. " _And_ you've apparently nursed me back to health. I believe I'm more at fault here."

Aloy gives a huff that's so uniquely _her_ that Nil can't keep from grinning so hard his cheeks ache.

"Fine. Whatever. Either way, you're not totally healed yet. A few more days, though, and…" Aloy trails off, and nervousness drapes over her.

"...and then we'll go together," he completes for her, softly and carefully. "That's what you told me. Right?"

She draws back, flabbergasted. "You...you heard that."

"I heard a lot." Raising his arms, Nil props his head up with them and regards her thoughtfully. "Some of it's faded around the edges, but...yes. I could hear you speaking to me, although my brain did strange things with it, to say the least."

Aloy doesn't speak, but the flush on her face spreads until the tips of her ears are red, and it's such an adorable sight that he has to laugh, richly and deeply and like he hasn't in years.

"It helped me, I think," Nil says after a moment, once he has calmed. "I don't know if I would have ever woken up otherwise."

"I've heard that talking can encourage someone who's sick or wounded and fallen into a deep sleep to wake up." She peers up at him, uncharacteristically hesitant. "I'm...happy that it worked."

"Me too." Nil's smile falters. "But Aloy, allow me to actually apologize. The duel...as much as I believed otherwise, I didn't actually want it. The thought of you dying - I know now that's not at all what I wanted."

"I feel the same, and if you're going to push it, I guess I accept your apology," she sighs. Her fingers fold and twist in her lap. "When you're done healing...you will come with me though, right?"

"I'll follow you where ever you lead," Nil replies at once, the vigor of his vow surprising even him. 

Her smile is as blinding as the pain of his wound had been, but both are healing. He drinks it in as greedily as he had her supposed death in his dreams.

Aloy never ceases to surprise him, and perhaps that's one of the reasons he's fallen for her, heart and soul. She surges forward, somehow managing to mind his bandaged wound, and then she's the one wrapping her arms around Nil. He embraces her in return, turning them both onto their sides and holding her outstretched body flush to his. Their hearts beat in furious tandem against their chests, against each other, and he trembles with the overwhelming force of the life they hold between them.

Outside, the rain continues to fall, but it's begun to let up. The thunder has ceased, and the trees sway back and forth gently now, their shadows waving amiably over the walls of the tent. 

If what Aloy has told him about her quest had been truthful, they do indeed have a lot to do. After all, he isn't keen on staring down the supposed end of the world a second time around. But for now, in the cocoon of their tent, Nil holds the woman he loves close and says a prayer - a thank you, to whoever or whatever is listening, for second chances.

**Author's Note:**

> Dedicated to one of my closest friends, mythicait, who has lost so much recently and needed something painful but hopeful. Fuck yeah, catharsis. 💜 Love you!!
> 
> This is a concept that grew over time, from a joking "what if Nil killed Aloy during the duel and her pissed-off ghost haunted him until HADES was successful" to an actually serious character study and a consideration of death, grieving, and life.
> 
> It was a serious challenge writing dialogue which made sense on both ends - Aloy speaking to a comatose Nil while Nil talks back to her in his dreams. The goal was to achieve growth on both ends while they're not actually communicating with each other, and I hope I was successful! (As always, please be kind enough to NOT leave unsolicited concrit on my work!)
> 
> (Also Faulkner is one of my favorite authors so of course I JUMPED at the chance to use this as a title)
> 
> Anyway, I hope yinz enjoyed this weird and cerebral ride, and I'll see you on Sunday for the next chapter of All Things Grow!


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